Frequently Asked Questions

Thank you for considering Polar Shredding for your document destrcution needs. Below you will find answers to several commonly asked questions. You will find them helpful to refer to when considering our services. If you have any additional questions please contact us at 800-866-9212.

It's the law! Every business has information that requires destruction. All businesses have occasion to discard confidential data. Customer lists, price lists, sales statistics, drafts of bids and letters, even memos, contain information about business activity, which would interest any competitor. Every business is also entrusted with information that must be kept private. Employees and customers have the legal right to have this data protected.

Without the proper safeguards, information ends up in the dumpster where it is readily and legally available to anybody. The trash is considered by business espionage professionals as the single most available source of competitive and private information from the average business. Any establishment that discards private property data without the benefit of destruction exposes itself to the risk of criminal and civil prosecution, as well as the costly loss of business.

Eliminating certain data in a timely fashion limits your liability in litigation and protects proprietary information from competitors. Our paper shredding service will securely eliminate confidential information.
Dumpster diving has practically become a pastime for those in the business of identity theft and corporate espionage. Without a program to control it, the daily trash of every business contains information that could be harmful. This information is especially useful to competitors because it contains the details of current activities. Discarded daily records include phone messages, memos, misprinted forms, drafts of bids and drafts of correspondence.

All businesses suffer potential exposure due to the need to discard these incidental business records. The only means of minimizing this exposure is to make sure such information is securely collected and destroyed.
For Security! To extract the scrap value from office paper, recycling companies use unscreened, minimum wage workers to extensively sort the material under unsecured conditions. The "acceptable" paper is stored for indefinite periods until there is enough of a particular type to process. The sorted paper, still intact, is then baled and sold to the highest bidder, often overseas, where it may be stored again for weeks or even months until it is finally used to make new products.

There is no fiduciary responsibility inherent in the recycling scenario. Paper is given away or sold and, in doing so, a company gives up the right to say how it is handled. There is, also, no practical means of establishing the exact date that a record is destroyed. In the event of an audit or litigation, this could be a legal necessity. And further, if something of a private nature does surface, the selection of this unsecured process could be interpreted as negligent. For these reasons, the choice of recycling as a means of information destruction is undesirable from a risk management perspective.

Any recycling company that minimizes the need for security has its own interests in mind and should be avoided.

The courts have ruled that once you place your material into a trash can, recycling receptacle, or dumpster, you lose all privacy rights to that information, no matter how sensitive or proprietary it is. Even if this is your trash can. The laws on public domain protect the people taking the information - NOT YOU! You may even be held liable for negligence if the discarded material does harm to someone.
The period of time that business records are stored should be determined by a retention schedule that takes into consideration their useful value to the business and the governing legal requirements. No record should be kept longer than this retention period.

By not adhering to a program of routinely destroying stored records, a company exhibits suspicious disposal practices that could be negatively construed in the event of litigation or audit.

Also, the new "Federal Rule 26" requires that, in the event of a law suit, each party will provide all relevant records to the opposing counsel within 85 days of the defendant's initial response. If either of the litigants does not fulfill this obligation, it could result in a summary finding against them. By destroying records according to a set schedule, a company appropriately limits the amount of materials it must search through to comply with this law. From a risk management perspective, the only acceptable method of discarding stored records is to destroy them by a method that ensures that the information is obliterated. Documenting the exact date that a record is destroyed is a recommended legal precaution.
Most commercial records storage facilities offer records destruction as a service to their customers. However, in a survey conducted by the National Association for Information Destruction, many of those firms were found lacking the equipment necessary to provide the services themselves. It is a common practice in the industry to subcontract the destruction of records. In some cases, disreputable storage firms were found misleading their customer by charging for secure records destruction while the materials were being sold to a recycling company for scrap.

Any business using a commercial records storage firm should inquire as to the nature of the destruction services that are available. It is an unacceptable risk to permit a storage firm to select a subcontractor to provide the records destruction service. The owner of the records is ultimately responsible for their security and, therefore should be selecting the vendor directly.
No. Our state-of-the-art secure mobile shredding truck does not require you to remove anything at all. Unlike office shredders which require the removal of all staples, paper clips, rubber bands, and other types of fasteners, at Polar Shredding our shredders are equipped to shred anything designed to hold paper together. With Polar Shredding, there is no wasted time sorting through stacks of paper to remove staples, etc. Just put your confidential documents in the provided container as is and we will take care of the rest.
Once your confidential documents are shredded, 100% of the paper is put into bales, recycled, and reused. At Polar Shredding we are dedicated not only to the secure destruction of your information, but also to the protection and preservation of our environment. The paper we shred at Polar Shredding becomes recycled products such as toilet paper, paper towels, napkins, dispenser towels, facial tissue, notebook paper, and many other useful recycled products.
Not a problem. Just give Polar Shredding a call and we will be more than happy to provide any service that your company might need. We are flexible and our number one priority is servicing the customer. We are able to schedule pickups whenever your company might need one, and are equipped to make pickups the day after your call to Polar Shredding.
We offer professional looking, secure locking containers with a convenient paper slot to slide papers into. We have three standard sizes of security containers: the 27" executive console, the 36" executive console and the 96 gallon plastic container. The 27" console is 27”h x 19”w x 19”d and holds about 60 pounds of paper and the 36" console is 36”h x 19”w x 19”d and holds about 90 pounds of paper. The 65 gallon bin is 45"h x 26"w x 33"d and holds about 240 pounds of paper.

See pictures of our security containers here.
Yes. Our state-of-the-art secure mobile shredding truck offers our customers the ability to monitor the destruction process through cameras installed in the shredding and collection compartments of the trucks.
No, sensitive material such as payroll information, employee information and legal information should not be entrusted to employees to destroy. In addition, standard office shredders do not have the capacity to shred substantial amounts of paper and other material. They average about 10 documents at a time and all paper clips, binder clips, rubber bands, etc. must be removed. What's more, they constantly jam. Our shredder is 30-50 times faster.

In a nutshell, legal liability, security, privacy issues, employee theft, identity theft, corporate and industrial espionage and the costs associated with running your own shredding operation make it risky. Since the objective of shredding information is to reduce risk, it just does not make sense to do it in-house.

Let us do it for you! Polar Shredding provides convenient bins onsite and conducts paper shredding according to your schedule. You'll find outsourcing this tedious task to Polar Shredding will save you time and money.

 

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